Youth
by xXYou-Can't-Judge-MeXx
Summary: Au where the Avengers are teens. Clint meets Natasha, and Natasha struggles with trust. Possible angst.
1. Chapter 1: Found

"Do you have eyes on the target, Barton?"

"Yes, Coulson," Clint responded to the voice in his communication link. Due to his partial deafness, it was larger than others and doubled as a hearing aid, and often grew heavy if he left it in for too long. He pulled his hand back, setting his bow, ready to fire, trying his best not to picture the small woman's body falling to the ground after he let the arrow fly. His hand trembled by his aching ear.

"Barton, take the shot, while you still have it." Clint didn't respond. "Barton. You said you could do this. That's true, isn't it?"

Clint relaxed his bow and lowered his arrow. "What did she do, again? I...I think hearing it again will help me...you know." Clint had never wanted to kill anyone, and, honestly, he'd never been able to go through with it before. Coulson had always been there for him, pulled the trigger, but today he had other things to do and the younger agent had come to kill the Black Widow on his own.

"Kills, Barton. She's killed lots of people. Would you like me to list their names?" Coulson's voice was calm and understanding, yet with a sense of urgency.

"No, please. I...no." Clint placed his arrow back on his bow and pulled it to his cheek, pointed at the small woman. "Just do it, Clint. You'll save innocent lives." He told himself. "Let go, in three, two..." Suddenly the Black Widow turned to him, making him jump, and he almost let go of the string instinctively. Shock coursed through him as he realized why she was so small.

"Coulson, she's thirteen! She doesn't look well, Phil, we've gotta take her in!" He relaxed his bow, put it and his arrow down, and pulled his quiver over his head. After he had his things in a neat pile,he climbed down from the balcony he had been perched on using the fire escape.

Clint landed softly and slowly approached the girl, with his hands up to show that he wasn't a threat. "Hey, my name's Clint."

The girl was obviously fresh--she hadn't completed her mission.

"I don't care," she muttered. Her accent was thinly Russian; she had practiced well.

Clint didn't miss a beat. "I'm fifteen, and I'm with an organization called 'SHEILD'. I want to help you, if you'll let me."

Clint slowly inched closer to her, yet she didn't move from her fighting stance.

"Are you okay?" Clint continued. "You don't seem like you've been in a fight, but you look sick..."

She shook her head, but she wobbled, and the life seemed to drain from her blue eyes.

Realization clicked to Clint. "You've been poisoned." His heart raced, because he wanted to help, but she was dying... "We can help you, uh..." he didn't know her name.

"Barton!" Coulson yelled through the com. "WHAT do you think you're--for the love of--you're doing the opposite of what I told you, you--" And at that, Clint took out his hearing aid and smashed it with his foot.

"I'm deaf now, alright?" He muttered to the little girl as he picked her up gently, just before she collapsed.

His bow and arrows were forgotten.


	2. Chapter 2: Poisoned

"Fury!" Clint crashed into their apartment. The Black Widow was now gripping his shirt weakly, yet as tight as she could as fast as she was losing energy.

"He's not here, him and Phil went looking for you...who's that?" Maria, who was twelve, asked curiously, peering from her room. After Clint didn't respond, as he was looking for Fury rather than her lips, she waited for him to look to her and repeated in sign language.

"Tasha," the girl in Clint's arms whispered. Her voice was weak, and her voice shook.

"She's been poisoned," Clint's voice shook too, but for different reasons. He felt oddly obliged to save her, as though he had knocked a baby bird from her nest, even though his original intents were to kill her.

"Hold on," Maria muttered, and she turned back into her room.

Clint gently set Tasha on the table--after sliding a vase to the side and shoving a lamp onto the floor. It was broken now.

Maria came back with a first aid kit and set a bucket on the floor. "Do you know what you ate? Who poisoned you?"

She shook her head as Clint put in an extra pair of plum-colored hearing aids.

The movement of her head seemed to make her worse, and it became apparent now that she had been hiding things from them--one of her "secret symptoms" had apparently been nausea, because she now sat up abruptly, grabbed the bucket, and became sick.

Clint gently pulled her long, curly, red hair out of her face. He felt bad, but he hoped that she would be alright. Her breath came in raspy gasps after that, and the little strength she had left was wasted on pained sobs.

"She needs an ambulence," Maria said sternly. "Call 9-1-1."

"I can't..." Clint whispered. "She's who I was sent to kill."

Maria looked betrayed. "How could you bring her here? What does it matter if she dies? She would have died anyway." Her throat closed up, and she shook her head. "I hate those words. I'm sorry, I don't want her to die, but, she's a killer!"

"We'll talk about it later," Clint said, "so end of discussion."

Tasha's face was completely white and ashy, and she bit her lip hard against the pain in her stomach. She was laying back down now, but there were tears streaming down her face.

There wasn't anything else they could do. If they knew the poison, they mighy be able to give her some form of anti-poison or whatever, but--

"I lied," Tasha said suddenly. "Clint--I'm sorry--I lied." Her breaths were harsh, and each one hit Clint in the chest. Hard.

"Lied about what?" Maria asked, now very suspicious.

"He's trying to kill me," she gasped. "My supervisor."


End file.
